The Deep

Elena Perse

According to oceanographers, the ‘deep’ starts where light begins to fade. As far as I’m concerned, though, the deep begins when my feet no longer reach the sand. When I dive down, I’ll run out of air before I touch the seabed. That’s deep to me. The light doesn’t matter so much.

The mesopelagic ‘twilight’ zone: a kilometre deep, sunlight valiantly trickles down until it is gone entirely, the water fading from deep blue to inky black.

It’s Sunday – I’m at my local beach for surf lifesaving. I’m nine – my group doesn’t patrol, fishing foolish swimmers from rips. We do everything else, though: sprints on the sand, paddling a surfboard taller than I am, and long open-water swims. Initially, I quite enjoy these swims. I have terrible vision, and I can’t wear my glasses at the beach. The only time in the two-hour session I can see clearly is when I tug on my prescription goggles, and finally, the world sharpens into focus.

I’m not coordinated: I hate carrying the unwieldy board along the beach, I’m always one of the stragglers paddling to shore. Catching a wave and losing control over the board scares me, and the session leader tells me to be ‘less polite’, to shove the other kids during beach flags. I can swim, though; even better, it’s a solo activity.

Slice through the water (fingers together: use your hand like a scoop, pull yourself forward), only gasp for air every third stroke. Don’t swallow seawater (you’ll cough and choke – your mouth will ache with saltiness). Watch out for stingers.

I power along in my own little world, not realising that the swim is getting longer every week until suddenly I reach the buoy marking the final distance and look down. And down. And down. The dark chain holding the buoy in place snakes all the way to the seabed, drifting with the flow of the tide. I have never realised quite how much water separates me from the sand tens of metres below. Suddenly, my peaceful seclusion becomes terrifying isolation – I’m so far from the shore, suspended in water. I’m acutely aware that this is not my home. I’m alone.

The bathypelagic ‘midnight’ zone: here, the sea is completely devoid of light. Cold and dark, these depths are beyond the reach of the sun, the stars, the moon.

I’m a little older, swimming through water silty with limestone. It’s like freestyle in a glass of room-temperature milk – as I stretch out my hands, they disappear into opaque whiteness. Suddenly, the warmth around me drops away, and the pit of my stomach drops with it. Tendrils of freezing water envelop me. My dad once told me that water temperature sometimes changes with depth. Mostly it’s the current, though. Tentatively, I stray deeper into the rapidly cooling bay. It’s just the current, says part of my brain. What’s down there? panics the rest. I feel like bait.

My chest tightens, and I turn frantically, gracelessly. Power towards the shore. Floundering, I feel simultaneously exactly like and the total opposite of a fish out of water. I shouldn’t be here – but instead of a scaly creature, gills begging for submersion, I’m a landlubber, too afraid to put my face in the water for fear of what I might glimpse in the depths. Slowly, eyes fixed ahead, neck aching from the awkward posture, I crawl towards safety.

Damp and shivering on the rocks, it takes a while for my heart rate to slow. I feel like this a lot. In a matter of months, I’ll be set adrift, starting high school. No idea what to expect. I try to convince myself that the pounding of my heart is just anticipation, excitement even. Anything to mask my fear of plunging into the unknown.

The abyssopelagic zone, ‘the abyss’: almost nothing can live this deep, in the freezing cold, complete darkness and tremendous pressure. ‘Abyss’ comes from Greek, meaning ‘without bottom’. It’s appropriate – this depth seems endless.

Fast forward a few years, and I’m up north, crammed into a wetsuit so tight I can hardly bend my elbows. I’m swimming along the edge of the Ningaloo Reef. In Yinigudura, ningaloo means deep water. This water is the deepest I’ve ever seen. On one side of me, a coral reef thrives. On the other side: nothing at all. I can’t see anything beyond green-blue darkening to indigo, then into total blackness. I can hardly breathe with fear. Both in the water, and out, I’m teetering on the edge of freefall. What is adulthood if not an abyss? My mouth tastes rubbery: I’m clenching my jaw so hard to stop my teeth chattering that my snorkel ends up scored with bitemarks.

The epipelagic ‘sunlight’ zone: warmest, lightest section of the ocean. This is where life thrives.

Did you know: if you blow onto a baby’s chubby face, they will reflexively breathe in. This way, explains the water babies instructor, they can go underwater without choking. No need to worry. My mum holds my tiny body in both hands. I won’t float away or sink to the tiled bottom of the pool as we duck below the surface. I’m safe in her grasp, an instinctive breath filling my lungs, sustaining me. We’re at Kaleeya – meaning ‘in sight of the sea’ in Noongar – but I’m not tackling the ocean just yet, only the pool.

Soon, though, I’ll have to take to the open water by myself, take a deep breath of my own volition. For a long time, I’ll struggle – my confidence as a swimmer won’t be enough to buoy me through life. I’ll get there, though. I’ll keep treading water and ignore what may or may not be beneath my feet –all that matters is the light filtering in from above.

Author’s note

I was immediately drawn to Bated Breath – I love the sea, but I have complicated feelings about it. The combination of beauty and danger in Bated Breath really appealed to me and inspired my depiction of the ocean. Growing up on the coast, I have always been a swimmer, and I wanted to map leaving childhood alongside a series of moments that took place in and around the water. The ocean is so overwhelmingly vast, but with a change in my perspective and confidence, swimming in the deep has come to feel more like an adventure (just like young adulthood).

Elena Perse studied a Master of Arts (Professional Writing and Publishing) at Curtin and currently works at Curtin’s Institute for Energy Transition. She is a bookseller, an Aquarius and a lover of creative non-fiction (not necessarily in that order).